New nosewheel fairing has towbar opening smaller than original

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Don
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Re: New nosewheel fairing has towbar opening smaller than original

Post by Don »

I have a high suspicion that you talked with an uninformed person at the factory and were given bad information on the nose wheel pant. The result is they sent you a wheel pant that is useless for a Lycoming DA 40. If you study the two comparison photos below, you can see everything is different between the the Austro NX nose gear, which is designed for a heavier front engine load, and the previous Lycoming nose gear assembly. (Even the nose gear leg elbow attaches through the top of the wheel pant at a different angle which will make it impossible to fit to your plane) Since Diamond is reintroducing the Lycoming Star again, they will still have the tooling molds for the correct wheel pant for your plane. That said, you may have to special order it and wait for them to fabricate it. I would call Diamond and insist on talking to a person higher on the food chain there. I would start with the engineering department.
Lycoming Nose Pant below.
Nose gear.jpg
DA40 NG Nose wheel.JPG
DA40 NG Nose wheel.JPG (32.36 KiB) Viewed 1021 times
Thanks "BoatGuy" for supplying NX photo.
Last edited by Don on Sat May 11, 2019 10:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Steve
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Re: New nosewheel fairing has towbar opening smaller than original

Post by Steve »

Those do look quite a bit different. I was just offering a suggestion based on my incorrect assumption that the only difference was the tow bar hole size. I agree that Don should move his issue up the Diamond Aircraft food chain, and if necessary, have them make you a new one from the old molds. I would, however, reiterate my first suggestion that he attempt to get his repaired. Xu Aviation in Canada has a great reputation, and the fairing is small enough to easily mail to them for repair and paint.

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Don
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Re: New nosewheel fairing has towbar opening smaller than original

Post by Don »

Steve,
I meant to address the OP, "40 Flyer" and mistakenly said Steve. That said, I agree with you that the best way to go is to have the existing wheel pants repaired than replaced. There is also a place in North Carolina that repairs DA-40 wheel pants. I did get a quote for $800 to repair a full set of three wheel pants. I still need to pack an extra set I have on hand and send to them.
EDIT: Here is a link showing how they repair Diamond wheel pants.
https://southtecaviation.com/2017/08/08 ... ng-repair/
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40flyer
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Re: New nosewheel fairing has towbar opening smaller than original

Post by 40flyer »

Well just to close this out, Diamond did not offer to fabricate a new fairing but said a field mod was required to enlarge the towbar opening on the new part they shipped. I had that done and the fairing is now installed. I am disappointed that Diamond does not maintain a stock of correct spare parts for their aircraft.
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